Reflection

Critically reflect on the success of this project. Were the aspirations and ambitions achieved. Was it received and encountered in the ways you wanted? If not, why not? What do you need to get there, etc?

Elaine: I think the project was a successful deliverable in putting forward a perspective that also leaves room for open interpretation. Tactically, the artifact was a cohesive integration of hardware, software, product and interaction design into a finished form. I think it has the potential to extend conversations and put forth new lines of inquiry for audiences. In the next versions, the piece would benefit from the ability to automatically transition from Alexa’s default voice to turning on the voice changer, and the ability to intelligently match the tone of voice with the type of information Alexa says.

Gabriel: I enjoyed working on this prototype because it ended up being the synthesis of a rich line of spooky inquiry that included the semi-structured interview of an everyday user of a smart voice assistant; the study of home privacy through analogous projects, like Project Alias by Bjorn Karmann; the return of characters from our cultural past for inspiration, such as HAL 9000 and, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [2]; and an AI generated narrative that set the context for an Alexa who suffers from a mental disorder.

My goal for this project was to generate questions regarding our daily interactions with smart home devices. Back in 1991, Mark Weiser wrote an article [3] that talks about physical computing and said that “the most profound technologies are those that disappear.” More than twenty years later, voice assistants do tend to disappear but due to the wrong reasons…

Because of the one-directional conversations and sterile dialogues that systems like Alexa support, everyday consumers use them for mundane tasks e.g. what is the weather like Today? With the modulation of color brightness and tone of voice, I wanted to increase awareness about their presence in our homes and think of new alternatives to relate with them.